


Thrice

by Lurlur



Category: Good Omens (TV), Slow Show - mia_ugly
Genre: Addiction, Drug Addiction, Gen, Getting Clean, Inspired by Slow Show - mia_ugly, Rehabilitation, Relapsing, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:09:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lurlur/pseuds/Lurlur
Summary: Inspired by and based on the characterisation from Slow Show by mia_ugly, the Good Omens fic that won't stop.How Crowley got his scars
Comments: 31
Kudos: 108
Collections: Slow Show Metaverse





	Thrice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia_ugly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ugly/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Slow Show](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20395261) by [mia_ugly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia_ugly/pseuds/mia_ugly). 



First

Crowley’s been out of rehab for a little over a week and it’s going fine, great really. He’s barely even thinking about calling his dealer and he’s only checked his stash spot every half hour since he got home. There’s nothing there, of course. The cleaning company was very thorough.

He gets up from the couch and walks a circuit of the hellish open plan house again, dragging his knuckles against the rough concrete until they are raw and screaming.

His parents haven’t visited, won’t visit, might call but it’s unlikely. Their parental obligations begin and end with the woman in the armchair who watches Crowley’s claustrophobic rat act with professional disinterest.

“Anthony,” the sound of her voice startles him, it’s been so long since either of them spoke. “Would you like to come meditate with me?”

He glances at the clock, sure enough, it’s 5 pm. Her invitation is an order wrapped up in a pretty box, part of her “wellness package” that’s apparently going to keep him clean indefinitely. Crowley has his doubts about the benefits of meditation for minds as busy as his likes to be. (How do you empty a mind that fills faster than it drains?) Natasha, the wellness consultant, is no help on the matter but Crowley wants it to work, he wants to get through this rough patch with nothing worse to show for it than a couple of shitty tattoos and a lifetime role as family black sheep. He breaks away from his circling and folds his spider limbs into a lotus position in front of the couch.

Back straight, arms relaxed, focusing on breathing with Natasha’s count. He can do this, he can empty his mind and just exist. It’s not that difficult. He’s doing it! _Well done, let’s celebrate with a call to Skud._ Fuck, no. Try again. Natasha is still counting breaths in and breaths out, just listen to her and don’t think about anything else. In-two-three-four-five, out-two-three-four-five. He wants a cigarette. And a drink. And heroin.

Shit.

He breathes. He relaxes as many muscles as he knows how. He thinks about a million different things a minute but it’s easier than trying to keep his mind blank. Eventually, Natasha decrees that they are finished and Crowley’s straight back on his feet, pacing like a caged tiger in a cage that’s too small for him. He wonders if Natasha would prefer to be thought of as his zookeeper or his babysitter. The meditation, the smoothies, the journaling, and whatever new thing she’ll introduce when it pops into her head; it’s all bullshit designed to waste time and keep him in sight. Crowley knows this and it chafes at him worse than the cravings that make him want to tear off his skin.

The fear is that as soon as he’s left to his own devices, he’ll be shooting up and making untold poor life decisions again. It’d be insulting if it weren’t so painfully true.

Crowley’s willpower is weak, even after the ordeals of withdrawal and weeks of rehab, even with his desire to not ruin his life with this shit, Crowley knows that he’s weak.

Shift change occurs at 8 pm, Natasha goes to sit in cold silence in her own home, Crowley assumes. Rebecca is more fun. They play cards for a few hours and she at least talks to Crowley while he goes out of his mind with cravings. She goes out onto the deck with him and smokes whilst complaining about her room-mates, her landlord, auditions she never heard back from. Everyone wants to be an actor. Even Crowley, deep in the hardened kernel inside his chest, still wants to be in this vapid, superficial, soul-crushing industry. Unfortunately, he wants to destroy himself just that bit more.

Rebecca locks the doors at 11, they sit up for a while longer playing Street Fighter until Crowley admits defeat and goes to bed. Lying on his bed, wearing just a pair of boxers, Crowley decides that his skin is going to vibrate off his body if he doesn’t move, he cracks open a window and smokes a cigarette down to the filter. It’s too tempting to squeeze his narrow shoulders through the window and sneak out into the night to hunt out any number of forbidden delights.

Crowley flops onto his bed to smoke another cigarette, deal with the one itchy craving he’s allowed to think about. The cigarette burns down to his fingers, making him suck the burns into his mouth as he stubs it out in the ashtray balancing on his chest.

For a moment, there’s clarity. For a single, bright moment, Crowley isn’t thinking about the grating in his veins, the throbbing pulse in his eyeballs, the itch under his fingernails. He’s lighting another cigarette before he even realises what he’s doing. The tip flares cherry-red to white as he draws on it, considering what he knows he’s about to do.

There’s no cinematic hiss when the cigarette meets his skin, just the clench of his teeth and a breath whistling between them. A blinding burst of heat narrows Crowley’s world down to the tiny circle on his chest and he can’t feel anything else. It’s already an ugly wound, it’ll leave an ugly scar; Crowley’s used to being ugly by now so it fits with his general self-image.

For two weeks, Crowley meditates poorly, smokes too many cigarettes (always carefully putting them out in ashtrays,) and presses his thumb into the slow-healing burn on his sternum to bring back that mind-clearing pain. Natasha, Rebecca, and the others consider their work complete and leave him alone.

Crowley relapses before the burn has healed.

Second

Same facility, better staff, better management. Crowley feels like he’s learned a lot by the time he leaves rehab after this stay, feels better equipped to deal with the reality of sobriety. He’s allowed to go to London, if he wants. He doesn’t want. No one will rent to him now and he doesn’t blame them, not a bit. His parents buy a place in Malibu, out of the way and in a neighbourhood where he might not be a bother. They wouldn’t visit; they call frequently and keep footing the bills but the parental sense of duty doesn’t extend to crossing the threshold.

Things had been worse this time, Crowley really feels like he understands the meaning of “rock bottom” in the way they talk about it for the program. He’s not convinced about following all the steps; there’s just a bit too much about higher powers and lack of self-determination in it for him to be truly comfortable, but he’s got some good techniques now, some things to think about.

The babysitting service his manager has hired for this stint bill themselves as “addiction specialists” and Crowley wants to ask each one of them why he’s so addicted to destroying himself. He’ll never be good enough, never achieve anything of note, never be deserving of happiness. Crowley knows these things like he knows his own name, like he knows the taste of Luke’s lips and the weight of his cock, like he knows those will be only memories from now on.

Dimly, Crowley thinks he should see a therapist and then laughs when he pictures his parents' reaction to that development. Therapy is for weak people.

The “addiction specialists” cycle through so quickly that Crowley stops trying to learn their names. He hates it, hates feeling like anyone is beneath him or that he’s too important to bother with them, but the truth is that he rarely sees the same person twice. He’s not sure how they manage it, how many stores of healthy-living yoga specialists the agency has in reserve, but every morning there’s a new face with a rolled-up yoga mat under one arm and a shiny white smile.

Crowley takes to the yoga particularly well, he likes it. Well, no, actually he fucking hates it, but it does something good for his brain, something that meditation never managed before. When he stretches and pushes himself into each pose, holding it with tense muscles and controlled breathing, he feels something approaching peace. He aches for hours afterwards, too sore to move, too tired to crave, but it’s temporary.

He’s blown his life up in the worst way and lost everything he worked for. Luke’s not coming back. Friends are in two categories: bad influences and those who’ll only overlook one stay in rehab. He never meant for this to happen, for this to be his life, but he’s here all the same.

Today’s new face (Carrie? Karen?) is leading them through a warm down, she hasn’t stretched him far enough to make the burn overpower the want and Crowley’s too broken to tell her so. He’ll make it through the rest of the day either through willpower or tearing his own eyeballs out, either way works for him. He’s in the shower, washing off the sweat he didn’t work up when his fingertips brush the raised edges of the burn scar. He hasn’t forgotten about it, but he had repressed how it felt to press that circlet of pain in his darkest times. The memory comes flooding back to fill the void left by an unsatisfactory yoga session.

With just a towel wrapped around his waist and still wet from the shower, Crowley grabs his cigarettes and heads out on to the deck. He smokes one, watching the embers race towards his fingers in quiet contemplation. He lights the second off the first, feeling poetic about the symbolism, he supposes.

This one hurts more than he remembers. He swears out loud but doesn’t pull his hand away from his chest until the heat recedes. It hurts in all the ways that Crowley deserves to be hurt and it does the trick. Perhaps not for as long as before, not as fully, but for a while Crowley has that sharp shortcut to the mind-clearing flash of pain again and it keeps him out of trouble.

Crowley relapses after 3 months.

Third

It’s court-mandated this time. The judge offers rehab or prison and Crowley’s had enough of prison by now. He’s still rich, white, and well-known, but the tarnish on his name has become a rot. He can’t get work. His manager dropped him. The doctor had told him that he’d nearly died. Wherever Crowley thought he had been before, it wasn’t rock bottom. He’s hit that now.

Withdrawal is a bitch and he deserves every second of it. He is incoherent for days with some small part of his mind wondering if he’d finally drugged himself beyond recovery.

The first day that he’s able to eat or drink without vomiting, Crowley makes a deal with himself. He’s made these deals before, of course, but never with this much weight, intent, and purpose behind them. He promises himself all kinds of rewards for sobriety: trips he wants to take, shows he wants to see, relationships he wants to repair. He doesn’t promise himself work, that’s not in his power no matter how much he wants it. He’s smoking on the balcony of his room, talking to himself inside his head. He knows it’s going to be fucking difficult, near impossible even, but he’s out of options. If he doesn’t want to die or end up as a washed-up junkie of an ex-actor selling his memorabilia for drug money. The image of him, red-eyed and staggering, outside a convention centre offering his few Wizard School props is too real for a moment and he closes his eyes to visualise something else.

The deal is struck, signed, and witnessed by one Anthony J. Crowley alone. It feels unfinished, illegitimate somehow. He itches again, his vision going fuzzy around the edges with twitchiness. Last times, last times for so many things. Crowley is starting to think along that dangerous addict slippery slope of having one last hit, just to say goodbye to that golden feeling. He knows that feeling too well, it’s got the better of him every time that he’s tried to do this alone. Before he knows what he’s doing, Crowley is unbuttoning his shirt and exposing those two old friends that already mark his chest. One more, one last time. Crowley cries as he presses the red glow into his skin. The deal is legitimised.

Crowley gets a sober companion this time. Jaime, her name is. She likes running and Crowley hates it but damn if it doesn’t quiet the needy voices. She likes yoga too and finds in Crowley a grudging but enthusiastic student. The best thing that Jaime does, though, is teach Crowley that meditation doesn’t mean clearing your mind completely. She teaches him about guided meditation and how not to get frustrated at the thoughts that flutter in and out of his head during their sessions. She lets him talk, listens as best she can and then suggests that he find a therapist. Crowley does. Well, he asks Beez to find him a therapist and they do. He doesn’t press on the wound this time, just lets it heal.

Crowley has some rough days, some rough months, sure.

Crowley doesn’t relapse.


End file.
